Geography: Mesopotamia, probably from Umma (modern Jokha)
Culture: Sumerian
Medium: Gypsum alabaster
Dimensions: H. 22.4 x W. 14.7 x D. 9.5 cm (8 7/8 x 5 3/4 x 3 3/4 in.)
Classification: Stone-Reliefs-Inscribed
Credit Line: Funds from various donors, 1958
Accession Number: 58.29
Among the earliest written documents from Mesopotamia are records of land sales or grants, often carved in stone with associated images, perhaps for public display. The Sumerian inscription on this stele records a transaction involving three fields, three houses, and some livestock. Ushumgal, a priest of the god Shara, and his daughter are the central figures of the transaction, but because of the archaic script, it is not clear whether Ushumgal is buying, selling, or granting these properties. The smaller figures along the sides very likely represent witnesses to the transaction.
In addition to their importance to understanding the development of writing, these early land documents provide evidence that land could be privately owned in early Mesopotamia, although a significant proportion was still owned by the gods and managed by their temples. While this development is not surprising from a modern point of view, in antiquity it represented a momentous conceptual and cultural shift
Met Museummetmuseum.org

Sobekneferu (sometimes written "Neferusobek") was an Egyptian woman reigning as pharaoh after the death of her brother Amenemhat IV. She was the last ruler of the 12th Dynasty and governed Egypt for almost 4 years from 1806 to 1802 BC. Her name means "the beauty of Sobek."

Drawing by Flinders Petrie of the cylinder seal of Sobekneferu in the British Museum
The original cylinder seal is now in the British Museum. Reign of Sobekneferu, very end of the 12th dynasty, Middle Kingdom

Lion inscribed with the cartouche of Khyan, British Museum, EA 987.
Lion of the Hyksos king Seuserenre Khyan • Conservation: London. British Museum, EA 987. bibliography: Labib, "Herrchaft der Hyksos, (1936), p. 32. Pl 8 [a]. Ryholt, K.S.B. "The Political Situation in Egypt During the Second Intermediate Period". 1997, p.384.
Seuserenre Khyan, Khian or Khayan was a king of the Hyksos Fifteenth dynasty of Egypt. His royal name Seuserenre translates as "The one whom Re has caus...ed to be strong."[1] Khyan bears the titles of an Egyptian king, but also the title ruler of the foreign land (heqa-khaset). The later title is the typical designation of the Hyksos rulers

Water jar (hydria-kalpis)
Vase-Painting in Italy (MFA), no. 085
Height: 49 cm (12 13/16 in.); diameter: 35 cm (10 7/16 in.)
Kadmos and the serpent. In the upper register is a gabled structure, possibly a heroon or a temple, its doors ajar to reveal the foreshortened roof timbers. In the pediment is a female face flanked by tendrils, perhaps an unusually tame gorgoneion. Yellow and black dots represent the nailheads and bosses on the doors. Two white-skinned females are seated on either side of the structure: the one on the left wears a chiton and a red himation and holds a yellow phiale in her left hand; the right one is nude to the waist, where her himation has fallen. Both women wear earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, and the one at the right has a bandoleer of charms. Both wear beaded stephanes of white, and the left one also wears a kekryphalos. The woman at the right looks down at the scene below where Kadmos and a companion battle the coiled serpent, whose white body is tinted with brown dilute glaze. Kadmos is at the left, holding a white spear and a white pointed amphora, both in his left hand. He moves to the left but looks back to the right, his face drawn in three-quarter view. He is naked save for an apicate fillet, a white sword and baldric, and the cloak over his left arm. He leans back with his right hand raised to throw a white stone at the snake, while his companion attacks it with a spear from the right. The companion is nude save for a white pilos and scabbard and the cloak over his left arm. Quadrated philai float in the field to his right and to the left of Kadmos.
Wave-pattern circles the outer rim, and a laurel wreath circles the lower neck below a band of dotted egg-pattern. The groundline circling the lower body consists of stopt maeanders to the right, with two checkerboards at left and right. The reverse is covered with large palmettes and scrolling tendrils, which extend to the areas below the handles. White dots and bars are used to highlight many points within the florals.
The amphora held by Kadmos was to be filled at the spring guarded by the serpent, the offspring of Ares. Though not visible, the spring is what gives life to the white flowers behind the serpent; their twisting stems are rendered by incising directly into the black glaze. In most such cases, Kadmos carries a hydria instead of an amphora, but the latter appears in two Paestan versions: a calyx-krater by Python (Louvre N 3157: Trendall, RVP, p. 143, no. 2/241, pl. 90), and a bell-krater by Asteas (Naples 82258: RVP, p. 85, no. 2/132, pl. 52). In Asteas’s version, the woman is seated above is identified as Thebe, the personification of the city Kadmos will found. Athena is present to guide the stone flung by Kadmos, and watching from above are the heads of the river god Ismenos and the fountain nymph Krenaia. In her comprehensive publication of the Boston vase, Emily Vermeule (in Festschrift Hanfmann, pp. 177-188) speculates that the two women might be Thebe and Dirke. M. A. Tiverios (LIMC, V, 1, p. 869) suggests Harmonia as another possibility. In the absence of inscriptions, attributes, or closer parallels, it is not possible to assign definite identities to these women, but some combination of the names that have been proposed is likely.
In addition to Vermeule’s discussion of the myth of Kadmos and its treatment in art and literature, see Trendall, PP, pp. 23-25; idem, RVP, pp. 95-96; F. Vian, Les Origines de Thebes: Cadmos et les Spartes (Paris 1963); and Tiverios, LIMC, V, 1, pp. 863-882.
The vase was originally attributed to the White-face Painter alone. Trendall has now recognized that this artist and the Frignano Painter are the same (Trendall, LCS, Suppl. III, p. 182). This vase is the artist’s most ambitious work, for he normally eschewed mythology for a monotonous series of languid youths, women, and Erotes. Compare the snake and Hesperides on his hydria in the Ros collection, Zurich (Trendall, LCS, p. 381, no. 3/139, pl. 147, 1; idem, Handbook, fig. 295).
(text from Vase-Painting in Italy, catalogue entry no. 85)
Provenance
By date unknown: with Hesperia Art, 2219 St. James Place, Philadelphia, PA. 19103; purchased by MFA from Robert E. Hecht, Jr., October 15, 1969www.mfa.org/

miércoles, 23 de diciembre de 2015

The tomb of the official Pay, at Saqqara, was originally constructed in the reign of Tutankhamun and then adapted by his son and successor Raia. It was used for the family's burials until the reign of Ramesses II, and then plundered soon after the final interment. In the Saite and Persian Periods, the tomb was reused for lower-status burials. First discovered in the nineteenth century, the tomb was excavated and recorded by the joint EES/National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden expedition between 1994 and 1998. This book, the result of international collaboration by many scholars, provides a full and detailed publication of the tomb's architecture, its relief decoration and the excavated objects

Bone panel with figure in classical style
Bone panel decorated in relief on one side with the depiction of a naked curly-haired male figure holding an indistinct object over his left shoulder. The figure conforms to classical Greek perspective which replaces the ancient Egyptian canons of art over the course of Ptolemaic and Roman rule. The panel probably comes from the only city founded in Egypt by the Romans, Antinoopolis in Middle Egypt, created by the emperor Hadrian at ...the site where his lover Antinous drowned in AD 130. In the Byzantine Period the city was capital of the province of Upper Egypt, and therefore at the forefront of changes in material culture.

sábado, 19 de diciembre de 2015

Gold sandals found on the mummified body of the king Shoshenq II. Ensured that the king would be shod like the gods in the afterlife. Country of Origin: Egypt. Culture: Ancient Egyptian. Date/Period: 3rd Intermediate, XXIInd Dynasty. Place of Origin: Tanis, circa 890 BC. Material Size: Gold l = 29.2 cm.Egyptian Museum, Cairo . Location: 36A.

The chapel is comprised of a single room, entirely excavated into the cliff, measuring between 6.27 and 6.42m in length (north-south) by 2.45m wide. The height to the ceiling is 2.25m.

The tomb of Merefnebef was discovered in 1997 on the site of Saqqara, by a team from The Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the Warsaw University, controlled by Prof. Karol Myśliwiec. The discovery followed two years of location work on the terrain, notably geophysical, followed by surveys.

The marsh and its undergrowth of papyrus doesn't seem to be part of the scene of Merefnebef in his boat. Rather, it presents itself as an insert, with only one small connection, that of the front of the vizier's boat and a small skiff in front of it using it as a background.

However, the freshness of these old colours, of 4500 years (45 centuries) can only be marvelled at. It is truly brilliant !

The tomb of Merefnebef was discovered in 1997 on the site of Saqqara, by a team from The Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the Warsaw University, controlled by Prof. Karol Myśliwiec. The discovery followed two years of location work on the terrain, notably geophysical, followed by surveys.

The goddess was never officially a mother (even though most records attribute to her the motherhood of Anubis, conceived in an adulterous way with her brother Osiris). By this fact, unlike Isis, she doesn't have the right to wear the vulture emblem. Note the clumsy way in which her right arm has been rendered.
The text above Nephthys is in six columns, read from left to right (view 4675 and TEXT). The content is similar to that of Isis, although content order is different. ...Tunutamen's cartouche, this time, appears towards the end of the text. Again the hieroglyphs are only completed in outline, but this time the name symbol of Nephthys (on her head) has been partially completed in yellow and red.

Nephthys

The goddess was never officially a mother (even though most records attribute to her the motherhood of Anubis, conceived in an adulterous way with her brother Osiris). By this fact, unlike Isis, she doesn't have the right to wear the vulture emblem. Note the clumsy way in which her right arm has been rendered.
The text above Nephthys is in six columns, read from left to right (view 4675 and TEXT). The content is similar to that of Isis, although content order is different. ...Tunutamen's cartouche, this time, appears towards the end of the text. Again the hieroglyphs are only completed in outline, but this time the name symbol of Nephthys (on her head) has been partially completed in yellow and red.

Detailed close-up of a limestone relief originally from Amarna depicting Nefertiti smiting a female captive on a royal barge. Found at Hermopolis, from the reign of Akhenaten, 1353-1336 B.C. On display at the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston

This sarcophagus, found in Tarsus in Asia Minor, is the collection's only complete sarcophagus of the Asiatic type. Its design is typical of the Prokonessos workshop; it is decorated on all four sides with oak leaf garlands supported by Nikai and Erotes, a small tabula, and Gorgon faces in the lunettes, and a steeply pitched gabled lid with akroteria. The back panel remains in its half-finished state, with the decorative forms only roughly indicated. Various marble quarries exported half-finished sarcophagi to Rome and other areas, to be finished at their destination according to clients' wishes. Many were used with some or all elements unfinished, perhaps due to time or financial constraints, or to an aesthetic choice. In this case, the client may have decided to display the sarcophagus against a wall instead of in the round, and thus chose not to have the back more fully carved. The tabula is normally meant to contain an inscription, though many are left blank like this one.
The leaflike tile pattern on the lid, also only partially finished, is more typical of Attic sarcophagi than Asiatic. The pediments of the lid feature mythological vignettes of Eros and Psyche; on one side, Eros aims an arrow at Psyche in order to wake her from a deathlike sleep, while on the other, the two embrace. A frieze of erotes hunting lions and other animals appears on the front of the lid; erotes engaged in pleasurable activities are common in funerary art.
Met Museummetmuseum.org

lunes, 14 de diciembre de 2015

Reign: reign of Niuserre or later
Date: ca. 2420–2389 B.C. or later
Geography: From Egypt, Memphite Region, Giza; Probably from Tomb of Nikauinpu
Medium: Limestone, paint traces
Dimensions: h. 10.5 cm (4 1/8 in)
Met Museummetmuseum.org
This woman sits on the ground with one knee raised. Against the hammock of cloth formed by her skirt stretched over her knee she holds a child whose yellow skin indicates she is a girl. With one hand the woman holds the child's head, while with the other she offers her breast to the child. The child's head is tilted back, either to gaze at the woman as nursing children may do, or perhaps in frustration as she cannot reach the breast. Behind the woman a red-painted and therefore male child kneels and pulls her second breast beneath her arm so that he can nurse, too.
Among Old Kingdom serving statuettes, women with chldren are a non-standard subject; indeed this is the only example depicting nursing. Serving women with children are seen more often in reliefs: in one tomb a child clings to his mother's back while she grinds grain, and nearby another woman nurses a chlld while she tends baking bread. The fact that the woman in the statuette here wears a white kerchief as do so many of the women in food preparation tasks, presumably to keep flour and such from their hair, may imply that this woman was involved in such tasks when she takes a moment to care for the children

Cypriot sculptors assimilated influences not only from the East but also from the Greek world. Carved in local Cypriot limestone, this figure is a kore (maiden) of the type well known from examples of marble, terracotta, and bronze. East Greek works would have provided the most immediate sources of inspiration.

viernes, 11 de diciembre de 2015

Stele of Pamerihu New Kingdom 19th dynasty, about 1304-1201 BC From Deir el-Medina (probably) Limestone... Height: 18.95 cm Width: 12.4 cm Thickness: 4.6 cm The round topped stele is a votive relief of the sculptor Pamerihu, who probably lived in Deir el-Medina and worked for the Royal Wife Ahmose-Nefertari (c.1570-1505 BC). She was the wife of the founder of the 18th dynasty Ahmose I (1570-1546 BC) and mother of King Amenhotep I (1525-1504 BC), the first king to be entombed in the Valley of the Kings. Ahmose-Nefertari and Amenhotep I are often jointly depicted on monuments in Deir el-Medina. Both were worshipped in the settlement.

Ahmose-Nefertari sits on the throne facing right in front of a table with a libation pot. She wears a flowing, pleated dress, typical in representations of elite women of the Ramesside period (about 1295-1069 BC) rather than the period during which the Queen was alive. On her head she wears the vulture head-dress of the goddess Mut, consort of the god Amun of Thebes, surmounted by a sun-disc and ostrich plumes. The cobra on her crown and the flail in her hand indicate her royal status. The lotus blossom was often held by deceased women, thought to be representing rebirth. There is a cartouche of Ahmose-Nefertari within the hieroglyphic inscription consisting of 2 vertical columns in the right upper part of the stele. Another inscription is written in black ink at the bottom of the stele. It consists of 2 horizontal lines of hieroglyphs and contains an offering formula. The inscription is faded in places.
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Egyptian - Oriental Collection Inv AE_INV_158 Provenance: 1821 gift of C. A. Fontanahttp://www.deirelmedina.com/lenka/